Amballore House (29 page)

Her second passion was teaching. She would die to hand over her knowledge to young brains that carried the promise of tomorrow. She was loved by the student community. Amballore University considered itself lucky in getting a professor of international reputation.

Another of her research was cutting edge, dealing with neuroscience and the creation of artificial intelligence based on a non-binary computer language. She had interest in robotic technology. She believed that she could create robots with better intelligence than human beings with all the added benefits of superhuman computing power.

The immediate future of humanity would host an age of quasi-robots resulting from replacing human organs like hearts, livers, lungs, kidneys, and the like with intelligent artificial organs coming from 3-D printing.

This period would be followed by full-fledged robots. With no need to worry about body and its functions, these robots will be endowed with an artificial brain, with a mechanical body controlled by its brain. This robot would be far superior to human beings. “Such a robot can execute all human tasks, and it will be the future norm. There will be no need to worry about emotions and feelings,” she said.

As usual, her class was full, and her teachings were broadcast all over the world by radio, since there was widespread interest in many countries to tune in to her teaching. She was usually mobbed by press reporters that came to interview her after her classes. On one particular Wednesday morning, she was conducting her class in the full view of press cameras, a usual scene of all her classes.

Eli walked into the classroom while the teaching was in progress. She walked in with her invisible body and therefore escaped anyone’s notice. She, however, made herself visible to Professor Rosanna.

The professor was standing on a raised platform with a chair placed behind her. Eli climbed up to the platform and occupied the chair. The professor was puzzled at this strange act from an unfamiliar lady. She stopped her teaching momentarily and turned toward Eli to inquire who she was and what she was doing on the stage. Eli sat there without responding. Meanwhile the class and TV crew were at a loss to see why the famous professor was talking to an empty chair. The scene was eerily reminiscent of Macbeth addressing the empty chair where Banquo’s ghost was sitting, a ghost only he could see and rest of the people in the banquet hall could not. Here was Eli, like Banquo, revealing herself only to the professor, and the professor enacting the role of Macbeth, talking to an apparently empty chair.

Rosanna was perturbed enough to call security to the podium. The
security personnel approached the professor. A quiet conversation followed between them, inaudible to the audience.

The professor said, “Ask her what she wants.”

“Ask who?” the officer replied.

“Are you blind? Look closely at the woman sitting on the chair,” Rosanna said.

He looked at the chair and confirmed that there was no one sitting on the chair.

Eli was enjoying the attention she received—or the lack thereof.

Understandably, the famous professor was getting agitated, and to make matters worse, the audience was watching the bizarre scene with rapt attention. This was an awkward detour from the regularly scheduled class.

Rosanna beckoned a press reporter from the gathered press. He walked up, with his heavy, telescopic camera hanging from his shoulders.

At this point, Eli decided to help herself to a glass of mango juice that was sitting on a tiny table by the side of the chair. The audience in the room saw the amazing act of the glass lifting itself up from the table, hanging in the air, tilting by itself, and emptying its contents. They were doubly surprised to see that the contents just disappeared, without falling to the floor!

The professor said to a reporter, “Take a picture of the lady drinking my mango juice.”

Reporter: Huh? Which lady?

Prof: Don’t stand there like an idiot. Do as I say.

The reporter obliged the professor just to be civil, even though he told himself that she was cranky and was seeing things. The picture, to the surprise of the gathered press, showed an old lady sitting on a chair and drinking mango juice! The professor was right all along! She was in full possession of her faculties, after all.

The concerned students approached the stage to help out, if they
could. The press offered to give her a break by offering cool drinks and refreshments to the audience. A call was made for a recess. However, Rosanna continued standing in the podium and talking furiously to the chair.

More security personnel arrived on the scene, and they formed a circle around the chair to trap its occupant. Eli stood on the chair and swiped the huge camera off the reporter’s shoulder and started swinging the camera, delivering heavy blows to the security guards surrounding her. They scrambled around the stage, some with bloodied noses, and some not knowing what hit them.

Then it happened.

In full view of the audience, the chair in question suddenly flew in the air and landed on a press reporter, the people around him scrambling to avoid the flying object. While this little episode was going on, Rosanna was suddenly carried from the podium by someone; no one was sure who.

Rosanna was heard screaming and then struggling with an invisible person while levitating above the stage and moving forward. She was being carried by whoever took control of her class. She was trying to ward off some person, as gathered by her actions. The army of security personnel followed the struggling professor, but they were unable to approach her. Whoever got close to her was airborne or thrown to the walls by whatever supernatural entity that possessed Rosanna’s class.

No one could rescue the professor. She was carried uninterrupted. More security personnel were called to the scene. They were floored by a camera suspended in air and swinging at them. The spectators saw a levitating professor moving further and further away from the class, still struggling to stave off some unseen force.

Needless to say, the disruption of the class gave way to a ruckus that left the students in shambles. They fled the class.

Amballore Junction once more was seen hosting a beaten-down vehicle with graffiti written all over. No one could see the driver or passengers, because the windows were made of stained glass. The Midnight Express crawled along a notorious road inhabited by
apsara virgins and drug dealers. The abandoned temple was hosting a pooja in honor of its goddess, Kodungallore Bagavathy. Eli efficiently drove the bus down Hell’s Highway to Amballore House. The bus floated over the surrounding brick wall and disappeared.

When the professor reached Amballore House underworld, Eli told her: “You will need a good rest, my dear, especially after the struggles of the day.” Eli tried to put the professor at ease, who looked dazed and scared.

“As a woman, especially as a woman, you will appreciate being in a time-stagnant building, because your beauty will be preserved forever here in this building. As long as you do not get out of this building, which you are not going to, you are not going to age anymore, my dear. Be happy, and thank your lucky stars! No need for those age-defying creams and makeup lotions anymore. Your youth is guaranteed, and it is eternal,” Eli told the professor, who was like her own daughter to the old woman.

Professor Rosanna, scared like a rabbit, nevertheless was fascinated to hear of the fountain of youth. She was intrigued.

7
THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS

The Midnight Express transported mysterious passengers to Amballore House. No one could board it except the special guests destined for Amballore House. It had its doors shut when it was at the bus station, letting no public in. Vareed and Eli made the decisions about who would be lucky enough to board the bus to become Amballore House’s esteemed guests.

The bus functioned more like a flying automobile executing an up-and-down bobbing motion. Floating like cotton wool, the vehicle appeared to execute the Brownian motion of physics when caught up in crosscurrents of multidirectional winds. The Amballore citizens noticed that the flying object touched the ground occasionally. While on the ground, the bus could weave in and out of the ever-present traps in the road that led to nowhere. It was a flying bus, yet it could easily blend in with the crowd of typical beaten-down buses trudging unceremoniously along Kerala’s roads.

It could change its shape like a chameleon would change its color. This enabled it to negotiate the turns of an unfriendly road. The material of the bus frame was inferred to be highly elastic in order for it to automatically narrow down to squeeze through the unexpectedly constricted portions of the road. The bus, on these occasions, resembled a very long centipede, having been stretched out of shape.

With flower prints all over its surface and ominous-looking graffiti to boot, the bus looked like the work of an artist from hell. The vehicle was usually followed by a dedicated crowd, intrigued by it and determined to unravel the mystery surrounding it. They traveled mostly as pedestrians, some in rickshaws and yet others on bikes. The mysterious vehicle traveled very slowly along Hell’s Highway as if it were on a sightseeing trip. The dedicated followers took pains to follow the slowly moving phenomenon. No one could see the inside because of the stained glass windows.

The vehicle and its retinue of truth-seeking stalwarts parading Hell’s Highway in the middle of the night was nothing but
spellbinding. The nighttime crowd flooding the streets could just as well have come from the local church festival that attracted an immense population, which usually spilled into people’s front yards. A band played satanic music. Street vendors sold candies and coconut drinks. Toddy was plentiful. They kept a respectful distance from the bus, being afraid of the unknown forces inside of it and possibly outside of it that controlled its course. No one knew who drove the bus, if at all there was a driver. They speculated that it could just as well be a self-driven bus.

This group included Einstein look-alikes who claimed to know the general theory of relativity that bestowed its supernatural aura upon the enigmatic Amballore House.

The bus always attracted a carnival-like crowd. The variety store appended to Amballore’s petrol station started selling trinkets, including Einstein masks, to entice die-hard Einstein followers to buy and wear them in order to become instant Einsteins. The would-be Einsteins prided themselves in understanding the theory of relativity, the most flamboyant theory of the twentieth century, designed to unlock the secrets of nature. The store was kept open from midnight onward to cater to the crowd that gravitated toward Amballore to partake in the festivities linked to the arrival of the Midnight Express.

The reporters from the Amballore
Times
started hovering around Amballore on midnights. The gathering of the press was more marked at midnight, when it was a given that the bizarre-looking bus would suddenly appear at Amballore Junction from nowhere to kick off its mysterious expedition to Amballore House. Joining the press were investigators into the paranormal phenomena, curious scientists from Amballore University, and weird onlookers who liked to hang around Sam-Som’s Entertainment Center and the abandoned temple, both located by the side of Hell’s Highway.

To their surprise, the reporters found that the bus did not stop at the gate of the mansion to wait for it to open to let it in. Instead, it lifted in the air, floated over the perimeter wall, and dived into the compound like a drone. It then disappeared just like that.

On some other occasions, the bus was found to pass through the perimeter wall without inflicting any damage to it. The wall stayed put, leading scientists to speculate about a newfound physics of a solid’s osmosis through a solid, unlike the well-known physics of liquid to liquid osmosis through a semipermeable membrane.

On one rare night, the bus stopped at the gate and unloaded passengers. This time, the press was able to get a closer look. They reported that the passengers were corpses that could walk. The press found out to their dismay that any pictures they took of the passengers turned out to be blank. Therefore, the public had to take a giant leap of faith to believe what they heard from the reporters.

Some of the passengers had arisen from the graveyard at Saint Joseph’s Church upon being summoned by Vareed. The public did not have the foggiest idea why only a handpicked group emerged from the grave. They did not know the significance of the occasional arrival of the Midnight Express at Amballore Junction. Mystery abounded.

***

Burial ceremonies in the paddy field were rudimentary and hurried. Instead of the conventional six-foot pit where a corpse was supposed to be buried, the aforementioned dead bodies were buried just under one foot, which spoke volumes of total disregard for the dead. These were the ones who died without anyone mourning. These were the ones called the poor and destitute. These were the ones for whom no tears were shed, for whom no bells tolled.

When the monsoon rains came and flooded parts of Kerala, Amballore’s abandoned paddy field overflowed with water that washed away the top layers of the soil, thus exposing the corpses buried just under. The exposed hair fluttered in the wind, scaring the daylights out of newcomers to the area. Little children and grown men got so horrified by the scene that they ran for their lives and ended up right in the outstretched arms of the nymphs of the demigod’s temple, who promptly led them to the pond to meet their watery ends.

Then there is the story of a certain man named Poulose who was
buried in the paddy field by his wife, Mariamma. She buried him standing up to settle a score in the game of life that these two had played. Though not a long story, it is spellbinding enough not to regret knowing about it.

Poulose was a hard-core alcoholic. He never met a toddy glass he did not drink, as his drinking buddies were quick to attest. They also pointed out that he was the first incarnation of Mahavishnu— that is, a fish—because he drank like a fish—toddy, that is. It was by mistake that he evolved into a human being, one of those aberrations of creation. He mostly spent his waking hours in the Amballore pub. He liked the pub life so much so that he could not live without it, so much so that he continued to go back to the pub daily even after taking up a job and therefore could not keep the job and got promptly fired; so much so that he was hated by his wife, Mariamma, for not supporting her, making her unable to make both ends meet; so much so that his home doors were shut against him at night when he dragged himself there from the pub. He spent his life sitting (and drinking, of course) and lying down to sleep in between the drinking sessions. He never had to stand up during his whole damned drunken life.